A review by danielles_reads
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

medium-paced

3.25

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my make-up be seen? Are they going to whip me?
No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What’s going on in the political prisons? 

I almost gave up in the first part, as Satrapi was annoyingly precocious as a child and the way she told the story of Iran made very little sense, and I had to google a lot. She made it seem like the revolution was spearheaded by communists, and that the Islamist regime came out of nowhere! Thankfully, me googling that led to me learning a lot. I had never heard of the Iran-Iraq war in the first place... But I was also annoyed that Satrapi is from a family so rich they were literally royalty. Like no wonder she was so obsessed with Western culture and looked down upon everyone else. But even though she was rich, her family still suffered from the war, and it's always good for outsiders to see the human toll of war. The amount of torture and executions of dissidents was wild.

But it did get a lot more interesting once she moved to Austria, as she discussed her conflicting identities and experiences. She was still annoying and insulted people all the time (the amount of fatphobia and ableism from her...) but the context of her story was really interesting. I liked seeing her fumble her way through life, learning how to speak German and interact with people with completely different upbringings than her. The part about the European anarchists being fascinated and almost jealous of her experiencing war and death was really eye-opening. And I do think the episodic format lent itself well to her story, and was done in a much better way than Ducks was, with more obvious links between chapters. The art style also worked well for this story, being both evocative and simple in its portrayal of war and depression.

Though I really wonder why her parents would send her to a foreign country alone at the age of 14?? They literally missed her formative years and left her to go through adolescence with zero guidance--no wonder she made the stupidest choices. I would have liked to have seen more from their point of view. Though I gotta say, Satrapi did some really awful things even as an adult (at age 20, she got an innocent man arrested by the regime to save herself and her pointless makeup?!) and had zero remorse, which really soured me. I'm glad she is honest about everything she did and experienced, but man. Girl needs to think about what she's saying!!

Plus, the ending was so abrupt. It made me feel like there wasn't really a cohesive theme in Satrapi's story other than drugs and depression resulting from war/being an outcast in a foreign country. 

As an intermediate French speaker, there were times when the translation was very obviously translated word-for-word from French in a way that either makes no sense or sounds really strange in English (with constant mentions of "which is to say" or "in this way", très français. and one mention of getting a permanent instead of a perm lol). I'm surprised such a popular and well-known book has such an awkward translation.

 In life you’ll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it’s because they’re stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance… Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.